July 19, 2018

Experiments in wet cyanotype - part 26

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Welcome to part 26 of my experiments in making wet process cyanotype prints, where I continue to chase the dream of making flower prints with this method.
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The difficulty lies in that wet cyan prints with the qualities I like--marked patterning and separation of colors--require lengthy exposures in the hot sun. That same hot sun, working on flower petals under glass, tends to shrivel or cook the flower petals quickly, which can lead to interesting results but not always the ones I'd prefer.
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So for this batch, I gathered a stargazer lily, a hydrangea flower, and double daylily stem, and a coneflower blossom, and set them up on treated cotton sateen. The twist was that I set them out to expose late in the afternoon, around 4, in partial shade, then left them out overnight. I collected them after the first of the morning sun rays hit them. Daytime temperatures were in the 80s F, with high humidity.
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I was successful in avoiding the worst of the flower petal meltdown. Here are the prints after exposure but before rinsing out. That cool green in the leaves almost always rinses out.
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After a very wet spring, we are in a dry spell. I water the flower beds but there's only so much I can compensate for. My poor hydrangea is just limping along, which accounts for the paltry nature of the flower head.
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Here are the finished prints. The stargazer lily turned out very well.
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And I'm pleased with the other as well.
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Obviously, by preserving the integrity of the flowers, I missed out on the more extreme colors and patterns in the backgrounds. The prints have a soft, dreamy feel, which objectively can be a fine thing. I can always harden up the lines and the edges with stitching if I so choose.
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But it's good to know that after all this experimentation, I have some fundamental grasp of what is going on in this wonderful, unpredictable process!
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As always, thanks for reading and commenting!

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